Italian bank UniCredit to provision $8.6b more in bad loans

Italian bank UniCredit says it will book an additional 8.1 billion euros ($8.1 billion) in bad loans in the last quarter of 2016.

That is in addition to a turnaround plan being voted on by shareholders Thursday to offload 17.7 billion euros in bad loans, cut 14,000 jobs and raise 13 billion euros in a capital increase to improve the bank's profitability.

Italy's largest bank by assets said in a statement that the latest provisions were part of a new strategy to manage soured loans that includes speeding up their collections or selling them on.

The bank said it aims to complete the capital increase in the first quarter.